Building the digital engine for a global high-street coffee brand

How do you build digital product capability at pace?

For our client, a global high-street coffee chain, the post‑pandemic reality was stark: digitise fast or risk falling behind. To stay relevant in its home market and fuel growth globally, the organisation needed to build a modern digital capability fast and almost entirely from scratch.

The brand’s future depended on creating connected, intuitive digital experiences that would deepen customer loyalty and open new commercial channels. But there was limited in-house digital product capability and no established digital ecosystem to build on. To move at pace, the leadership team asked Baringa to help define and deliver a digital product strategy that could scale across markets, and develop a team capable of turning ideas into working products quickly and reliably.

Building it together

We embedded specialist digital product, loyalty and customer experience capability directly into the global digital product team, including filling the roles of Global Head of Digital Product and Chief Product Officer. Working side by side with senior leaders, we helped shape and deliver a clear vision that could flex across different customer groups and markets, while balancing commercial strength with a great customer experience.

Our work included launching, running and enhancing the organisation’s industry-first coffee subscription service. The service went live in the UK just weeks after work began. We improved customer experience, introduced new functionality and put automated cancellation processes in place. We also designed and implemented a new fraud process that reduced losses by around 80%.

Alongside this, we led the delivery of the organisation’s first mobile app, launching on iOS with no marketing support. Despite the quiet release, the app quickly reached the top 10 Food & Beverage apps in the App Store and picked up more than 3,000 reviews in its first six months.

Our work also extended to designing and delivering a new loyalty programme, drawing on customer research and deploying service design sprints, commercial modelling and full technical execution.

Digital with real commercial impact

The business now has a set of propositions that are reshaping how customers interact with the brand. The subscription product, which went viral on launch, is now far more resilient and operationally efficient, with a fast-growing member base.  Meanwhile, the app’s continued growth – and its 4.8-star rating – has strengthened customer engagement across both subscription and loyalty. The loyalty programme, designed to generate an increase of 1–2% in gross margin in its first year, is set for global roll-out.

Ready for whatever comes next

Our client’s global digital product function has matured significantly and now uses consistent service design and agile practices to deliver new products at pace. As a result, the business is positioned to scale its digital innovation agenda and continue developing new features and products, evolving in step with customer expectations.